Servers

IBM and HP continue their duel to be the favored enterprise server provider, but there are many other players - including Dell, Oracle, and Cisco. Meanwhile, public clouds and virtualization should keep the server market interesting.

Analysts warn that VMware will face increasing competition from startups and established cloud players, but VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger says its focus on providing "value" via its products will keep these rivals at bay.

The second Technical Preview of the next version of Windows Server concentrates on tools to improve how we use servers today, with hints of the microservices and containers that future cloud techniques...

Post-company split, Hewlett-Packard's enterprise business is seeing growth in the Australian market, and believes delivering on customer demand, particularly in the converged infrastructure market, is helping fuel growth.

There is rarely a day that goes by without someone relating a story of a technology fail. It can either be a spectacular visual breakdown, or just that sinking feeling when you realise you really did just delete that data. We show you some of our low tech moments in the hopes that you might share yours with us.

There are several options to expand your network's storage, but one of the most rewarding learning experiences can be building your own network-attached storage (NAS) server. ZDNet UK walks us through the process.

The CeBIT 2011 action is over now, with stalls being dismantled in front of the ZDNet Australia team's eyes last night. But while it was alive, it was bustling and full of tech. Take a look at some of the stalls we visited.

In the heart of the Sydney CBD, Macquarie Telecom houses its secure datacentre and operations monitoring facility, the Intellicentre One. Built almost a decade ago, the Intellicentre is Macquarie Telecom's flagship data operations facility, and is in the process of an infrastructure makeover.

After Victoria University opened its datacentre in Sunshine, Victoria in 2009, it has been progressively migrating its infrastructure services over from its old, inefficient centre in Footscray to the new site, and plans to ramp up the migration over the next six months.

At Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison unveils a new storage server product, dubbed Exadata. The programmable storage server aims to put database intelligence next to each drive. The Exadata storage server will be immediately available on Linux running on Intel, but Ellison noted that other flavors for various platforms "are on the way."

Paul Perrone, CEO of Perrone Robotics, introduces Tommy Jr., a driverless car powered by Solaris and Java, created for the DARPA Urban Challenge. The vehicle made an appearance on stage at the JavaOne conference last week in San Francisco. Tommy Jr. will navigate using laser "eyes" mounted on the body of the car, along with GPS accurate to within 2 to 4 inches.

It seems going virtual can create some very real returns. Not only does virtualisation cut down on wasted CPU, disk and memory capacity, it also allows for more rapid deployment of applications and reduces power usage.

On the floor of Interop New York 2007, ZDNet Executive Editor David Berlind stops by the Plat'Home booth to take a closer look at its new--and small--Linux servers. With no moving parts, the OpenBlock S266 and the OpenMicroServer can operate in places where there is little room as well as little tolerance for machines that produce excessive heat.

An affordable high-density server platform, the Atom-powered Green Power 2200-T can't match a conventional blade server on processing terms, but beats it hands-down on power and cooling. If that's important to you, and you don't need massively scalable servers, it could be just the ticket.

This welcome update brings Microsoft's Small Business Server into line with the rest of the Windows Server family, while also simplifying management and enhancing remote access. It's far from cheap, however, and smaller companies may be better off evaluating the Essentials version.

RHEL 6 offers greatly enhanced scalability and is well equipped to handle future technological advances. The switch to KVM virtualisation and server subscription tweaks may not be universally popular, but existing Red Hat customers and new Linux converts should still consider it.

All over the world, schools are facing the same challenge: bringing ICT to students in a cost-effective way. "Each student should have their own laptop/netbook/PC," echoes the mantra, and school budgets groan trying to make ends meet. Microsoft MultiPoint Server 2010 seeks to solve the problem.

Snow Leopard Server includes major updates to some of the OS's core components and is now fully 64-bit. Ease of use, plus simple and affordable licensing make OS X a viable alternative to Microsoft's Windows Server 2008, although we had problems with one or two features.